The coalition, with great detail, statistically portrays the financial plight of many low-income renters. Basically, what’s paid to the landlord can gobble up an overwhelming slice of people’s paychecks.

I filled my trusty spreadsheet with coalition data and found California’s typical renting household has a monthly income of $3,913. Compared to the “fair market” rent for a two-bedroom unit – that’s a housing metric from Housing and Urban Development – of $1,699 a month, that means in theory 43 percent of renter pay goes to the landlord.

The coalition uses HUD’s affordability definition of 30 percent housing cost-to-income ratio to define what’s unacceptable financial stress caused by pricey housing. So, it would take a 31 percent cut in the typical California “fair market” rent on a two-bedroom unit to get the typical tenant to 30 percent of their household income spent on the monthly rent check. Nationally, it’s an 18 percent cut.

Look around Southern California to see varying mismatches of renter incomes and rents, and what level of rent cut would bring the pay-to-cost ratio to 30 percent …

Los Angeles County: $3,532 in monthly income vs. $1,663 rent. A 36 percent cut in rents would be needed.

Question the statistical logic all you want, but this math displays the potential size of a renter’s financial challenge.

The 30% solution

A good deal of the affordability dialogue centers around a notion that spending more than 30 percent level of a household’s income on housing is too much.

It’s certainly a reasonable target but it’s history – and reality – suggests it may be out of touch. Especially for renters.

The roots of this 30-percent level dates to Great Depression-era policymaking. And in 1983, 30 percent was codified into federal housing legislation as the affordability standard. Various studies suggest this level was designed to increase potential beneficiaries of housing policy, not as financial-planning wisdom.

But forget history, look at reality.

Since 1984, when consumer spending details were first tracked by the federal government, a U.S. renter’s housing costs rose at an average rate of 3.7 percent a year through 2016. Income rose only 3.3 percent. Over three-plus decades, that means the average renter’s housing costs went from 30 percent of income to 35 percent of income.

(Note: Homeowners have not suffered the same fate. Their housing-spending ratio was 22.5 percent in 2016 vs. 27 percent in 1984.)

This growing financial burden to renters is a perfect motivation for political solutions: limits on rent increases or incentives to construct more rental units. I’d suggest, at a minimum, the landlord community note the ballot-box power of those arguments.

Maybe 35%?

The 30 percent level of “affordability” is a noble financial goal for many households. But it should not be gospel for policymaking either.

The questions are daunting, even without setting a standard. Who should get “affordable” rent? For what apartment size? Should what the middle of the market pays for an apartment – the “median” — be affordable to some, most or all households?

And I know many will say … just let the “free market” fix it, both in terms of pricing and creating new supply.

Several other affordability studies using HUD’s 30 percent guidelines suggest California is 1 million or more housing units short of what it needs. My educated guess is if that kind of production could be ever achieved – we all know our state’s issues with development – it would likely swamp the market.

Yes, that would depress pricing of rentals and ownership homes. But we’ve been there quite recently if you remember the financial pain of the years during and after the Great Recession. No fun, indeed.

That said, we need more housing, especially properties built for what most folks would consider “affordable” prices. And maybe we should rethink “affordability” targets, too.

Take my overpriced-rent logic but substitute a 35 percent rent-to-pay target, essentially today’s national average. You’ll find California rents are still expensive, just less dramatically. Statewide, typical two-bedroom rents should be cut 19 percent to be “affordable” to the median renting household income. Under the 30 percent threshold, the cut would need to be 31 percent. National rents would only need a 4 percent cut to meet a 35 percent cost level.

In Los Angeles County, 26 percent lower rents would meet the higher threshold; in Orange County, a 14 percent cut is needed; and in San Bernardino County, it’s 3 percent.

And don’t let Riverside County landlords see this: At a 35 percent cost-to-income ratio, their rents are 3 percent too low by my simple math.

Jonathan Lansner has been the Orange County Register's business columnist since 1997 and has been part of the newspaper's coverage of the local business scene since 1986. He is a native New Yorker who is a past national president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Jon lives in Trabuco Canyon -- yes, a homeowner -- and when he's not fiddling with his trusty spreadsheet at work you can likely find him rooting for his beloved Anaheim Ducks or umpiring local lacrosse games.